


Breaking and Entering; and Your New Carpet

by Draikinator



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blood, M/M, Pining, Unfinished, some internalized homophobia, wade doesn't respect personal space?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 19:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13958706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: Hey, I'm just gonna be straight up with y'all. This has been sitting in my drafts unfinished for almost two years now and it's time for me to face the truth: I'm never going to finish it. But I did like what I wrote so I'm going to share it. This is a dumb pining fic where peter is a dumb boy who doesn't realize he's being flirted with and wade doesn't realize Pete actually likes his bullshit way more than he lets on





	Breaking and Entering; and Your New Carpet

You wonder if you should get a better apartment.

The ceiling is riddled with little spiderweb cracks (not a pun, you swear, at least not an intentional one), silver-grey and caulked over like they could be hidden beneath their own failing scars-

It's a ceiling. You’re waxing poetic and it’s really pathetic.

You roll over and stare at the dull red glow of your alarm clock on your night stand instead, lighting the hollows of your eyes and the bridge of your nose with the faint reminder that it’s 1:03 AM. You should be sleeping. You have work in the morning.

You wonder if you should get a better apartment.

It’s tiny and it’s cramped but it’s New York, so your basic four hundred and eighty square foot, one bedroom flat is definitely better than you could be calling home potentially. It’s only $1300 a month. It’s not that bad. It could be better, though.

It’s been three months now since you paid the rent. The first month you protested and the second you were hesitantly grateful and now in the third you are not sure if you want to move to a better apartment since you’re on Shield’s dime anyway, or if you want to take your bills back whether Fury wants you to or not. It’s just helping, Peter. You do a job, perform a service, you deserve to be compensated, Peter.

Tony Stark lives in mansions and skyscrapers and whatever the hell he chooses to that weekend, and no one bats an eyelash. Is that fair? Are any of you doing your part really, as superheroes, to think you deserve compensation for this? Are you using people? Things for you could be worse and the money spent on your apartment could be paying for the apartment of a homeless orphan or someone who can’t work and can’t take care of themselves- you can. You’ve been scraping by for years on an uncompleted doctorate and a few scattered patents. You’re doing okay. Is it right to expect more? Is it fair? Are you doing what you do for the right reasons- do those reasons even matter if you do the right thing?

You wonder if you should get a better apartment.

There’s a crash in your kitchen.

You shove your face into the pillow and groan, but you can already hear chipper singing and the stove fan clicking on. You think to yourself that if you wait it out, maybe he’ll leave, but you know better than that. By the time you’ve slunk out of bed like a festering pool of ooze and into some sweatpants and your mask and your kitchen, he’s already pouring batter into the pan.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Wade singsongs through the fabric of his mask. You can see it clinging to his lips with moisture. Spit. Blood. He’s been working. He’s tracked mud in from the window and there’s gashes in his copy cat costume.

“Wade,” you say, groggy, irritated, “It’s one in the morning.”

“In the morning! Exactly. And morning is always the time for pancakes.”

“No pancakes until after seven,” you say, and slink into your kitchen chair, resting your chin on your arms against the table. He shrugs and puts the batter jug (an old orange juice bottle with the label scraped off and “Wade’s” scribbled in black sharpie on the front) that’s been sitting in your fridge for two weeks, since the last time he broke in to feed you like some kind of mercenary grandmother on a mission. There’s little hearts drawn on it. You might find it endearing if it weren't so irritating.

“Fine then,” Wade says, “More for me.”

“What do you want?” You say, and let your eyes shut. He snorts.

“I want to make you pancakes, duh.”

Three months since you let Shield put you in their database, two since Deadpool started showing up at your house at random hours with pancake mix or weird potted plants from Indonesia with very very strict care guidelines and vinyl cartoon character birthday balloons. You’ve never understood him. You hope you never do.

“Go home, Wade.”

“I am home! Someone’s home. Not my home. You didn’t specify,” he flips the pancake with your spatula. Metal. The plastic ones melt and warp. Irritating. “You’re out of maple syrup again. You were supposed to pick that up, sweetums! How does ketchup sound? Fuck yes, ketchup pancakes, that sounds amazing. Shut up, what do you know about pancakes? God damn I’m good at this.” He flips a pancake really dramatically and you’re a little impressed when he catches it. Unlike yours, his reflexes are all real.

“No ketchup,” you say, “There’s butter in the fridge, though. Behind the leftover chinese.” Deadpool flashes you a thumbs up and you notice the fabric around that part of his hand is missing, the skin still pink. It looks new. You wonder how he lost it.

“So,” he says, dipping into your fridge to tumble your leftovers around, “I’ve got to ship out on a job in about an hour, and I wanted to offer you-”

“Ah,” you snort, “There we go, the real reason.”

He covers his mouth in a tiny gasp, “I’m hurt, Spidey. I truly did just want to make you delicious pancakes.”

“Sure,” you say, and snatch the paper plate from him when he passes it to you. Chocolate chip. He pushes the butter toward you.

“Aw, Spidey, you always think the worst of me! Okay, so, here’s the job, right? Some dildo in Ecuador dropped fifty big ones on me to rescue his dear daughter yeah? She got kidnapped or some shit by some C class fuckbrain with super strength or polymorphing, I dunno, I skimmed, whatever, in any case, I see this job and I think to myself whoa!!! No murder (required)!! Saving a person! That’s my good pal Spidey’s whole shtick! And I know he’s probably not as hyped as I would be to be on Shield’s dime,” you grimace, “so I think to myself, yo, yo, the wheels are turning, fat little hamsters running around all willy fucking nilly-”

“Wade-”

“And I say, how ‘bout it, buddy? 70/30, yeah?”

“Wade.”

“Okay, okay! You wore me down! 60/40.” You rub the bridge of your nose and sigh. “50/50! Goddamn, Webs, you are a damn fine haggler, ain’tcha?”

“Wade, I don’t do this for money.”

“Geez, okay, fine, you know, you really should look at a job as one of them hostage negotiators yeah? I guess you do that sometimes anyway, huh. You can take the whole paycheck and I’ll soak up your sweet sticky company.”

“No,” you say, and tug the bottom of your mask up over your nose, jabbing a forkful of buttered chocolate chip pancakes in your mouth. He pauses for a moment, looking like he’s deliberating something, before he shrugs.

“Okie dokie,” he says, and pours another pancake on the stove, before he starts enthusiastically humming “Smoke on the Water.” You try not to tap out the tune with your heel, but you really like that song and you give up pretty quickly. The pancakes are good and you can see him smiling through his mask.

* * *

 

“Heyyyyyy!” Oh god, it’s Wade.

“Not now, Deadpool-” you brace the flats of your feet against the robots bubbled metal chest and wrench its weaponized arm from its socket with a steel screech and an electric pop. It rears back up at you, clawed arm aiming for your face, and its head explodes. You glance back at Deadpool, and he’s blowing smoke off the barrel of whatever canon he just pulled out of fucking hammerspace.

“Aw, come on baby, I wanna help!”

“Okay, one, never call me baby again-”

“Whoops. Touchy. Maybe we could get touchy later together, huh?”

“Two, please tell me you’re not here because you took a job fighting for whoever sent the robots.”

“There’s actually this really good Mexican place around the block and Tuesdays are half priced tacos, so-”

“Good enough. Grateful for the help,” you say, and he beams, stomping the ground a few times like an excited toddler who needs to pee before he makes a “whoop” noise and shoots another robot in the face.

* * *

 

There’s a crash from your kitchen.

Your hand slaps at your nightstand a few times before you manage to pry open the side flap and get your mask out. You pad out into the kitchen expecting pancakes and Smoke on the Water and instead, you find a massive red stain from your window to your couch and what appears to be at least half of Wade Wilson wheezing between your secondhand Goodwill cushions.

“Holy shit,” you say, startled.

“The- this- fine, it’s,” he stammers. Where the hell is his mouth? “I just gotta, take a minute, I’m- this? You?”

“Jesus christ, Wade, what happened?”  
You say. You wonder if you should get a towel. There’s too much blood to clean up- you’re gonna need a new carpet, it’s too late to get it out, you can’t afford that, you’re going to need to call Fury for a damn carpet and-

“Not important,” he slurs, face in a pillow, “I’ll pay for it.”

He can’t read minds, right? You’re pretty sure he can’t. Hey, if you can read minds, you better say something, Wade.

“Sorry,” he says, “but hey, s-since the carpets already ruined, might as well make the m-most out of it, huh?”

“How’d you get here?”

“Ding ding ding, not important either, you’re on a roll with these hot guesses hot stuff.”

You don’t push it. He’s shaking. You’re pretty sure it’s the bloodloss, but you pick up an old fleece throw off the floor anyway. He waves at you when you step close and you stop.

“‘M gonna ruin it, ‘s fine, just go back t’bed.”

You roll your eyes at him and toss the throw over him anyway. He grabs at the edges with mangled hands greedily, like a hungry animal and curls into it with a very dramatic shudder.

“Hey,” you say, scratching the back of your head, “You sure your healing factor can handle this? Do I need to call someone?”

“‘S no one to call,” he laughs, and you frown, “It’s fine. I’m fine. He knows that, that’s not what he’s talking about and you know it. I’ll be okay in the morning.” He drags up his one remaining leg to his chest under the red plaid fleece. You shift your weight on your heels.

“If you say so,” you say. You pad back to your room and hear him make a sad little choking nose in your living room that really worries you, so you just grab your cell off the charger and put your ass in the bloodstained seat of your very much ruined couch that he’s not oozed out over, and he butts the top of his head into your thigh.

“Go the fuck to sleep,” he whines. Significantly less chipper than usual. You don’t think it’s the injuries, you’ve seen him get chopped in half and laugh about it. Something else must have rattled him.

“Nah,” you say, and kick your feet up on the coffee table, opening up iBooks on your phone to the page of Eugenesis you’ve had bookmarked for three weeks, “I can’t sleep with a blood covered maniac in my living room.”

“You’ll leave when my dick grows back,” he says, shifting into the blanket. You don’t really know how to respond to that, so you just shrug.

You’re another seventy pages in and really starting to wonder if every character in this book is going to die when Wade jerks at your side like a fish on a dock and you drop your phone, startled.

“Shit,” he says, and you realize he’d fallen asleep, “Sorry, webhead.”

“Are you ever gonna use my name?” You sigh, exasperated. That’s one of your least favourite nicknames.

“Spider-man is so formal,” he snorts, “and I always forget the dash. Who puts a dash in their name?”

“I meant my name-name, but close enough,” you swipe the page.

“I don’t know your name-name,” he says, and you see him pick up one hand and inspect it from your peripherals. His fingers all grew back.

“Yeah, sure,” you snort. He folds his fingers against his palm and buries his face in your blanket.

“Alrighty. Steve? Patrick. Billy? Julio. Don’t tell me- Delilah!” You frown, click your phone screen off and look down at him.

“Come on, dude, you know where I live, are you seriously still fucking pretending you didn’t suss out my secret identity?”

“I just pulled the address because I had extra pancake mix,” he mumbles, “Secret Identities are a big deal to the hero types.”

“Are you serious?”

“No, I’m Lupin,” he snickers. You roll your eyes.

“I knew it.”

“No, no, seriously!” Wade rolls around like a turtle on its back a bit and flails his arms up at you, “I don’t know! Promise!”

You look down at him, furrowing your brows. “You really don’t know who I am?”

“Okay, well, I definitely know who you are,” he says, “Super cool Spidey who saves li’l kids from burning buildings and shit and still lives in a crummy ass thirteen hundred dollar apartment.”

You snort, and bite your lip, try not to overthink it, and push your thumbs under the lip of your mask and tug it off as nonchalantly as you can.

“Whoa,” he says, eyes like dinner plates, “Are you sure you’re not like, a shapeshifter or some shit? Am I hallucinating?” He waves a hand in front of his face.

“I mean, you might be,” you say, trying not to let the heat show on your face. You don’t like being stared at. “Just don’t tell anyone what I look like, okay? Or where I live. Seriously, Wade.”

“Of course not!” He says, indignantly, scrambling to his knees, wobbling ever so slightly. His leg is mostly grown back, you notice. “Dude, what’s your name? It’s not seriously Delilah, is it? I mean it’s cool if it is, but-”

“Peter,” you say. He’s like a little kid sometimes when he gets like this, bouncy and excitable.

“Peter. Peter! Pete Pete Petey Peter!” He says, like he’s memorizing a new word and you cock a confused eyebrow at him, “Your name’s Peter!”

“Yeah, it’s Pe-” he cuts you off with his mouth, hands on the sides of your face and it takes you almost a full second to process he’s kissing you. Your first observation is that he smells like blood and puss and that his face is bubbly and broken, lips lumpy with scars and cuts, little bumps and ridges pushing against your cheeks like tiny mountain ranges. Your second observation is that all of this is a lot less gross than you would have anticipated, but despite that, your third is the way his sternum feels against your shin when you knee him in the chest and shove him of the couch.

“Whoa,” he says, one leg still on the couch cushion. Your scramble backward and over the side of the couch.

“What the hell, dude?”

“I think I seriously misinterpreted where this was going,”

“Yeah,” you say, confused, a little breathless, “yeah.”

“Oh.” He says. He looks confused. He looks surprised.

“I- I gotta go,” you say, and grab your mask from where it had fallen. He gets tangled up in the blanket you gave him earlier and you’re already out the door. Days like these you’re glad your costume’s red anyway.

You spend the next five hours doing as much hero work as you can but you find that when the sun starts peaking over the rooftops you can’t find anything else that needs your assistance. You’re tired. You need to go to bed.

When you get home he’s gone. The window’s open and you don’t know why he didn't just use the door like a normal person but your blanket is folded on the couch even though its bloody and the pancake mix is missing from your fridge.

You go to bed and wonder if you’ve ruined something you didn’t want to ruin.

You didn’t like him, did you? You hated him on your couch. You turn to look at the cell phone on your nightstand and wonder if you should call fury about the carpet, but you don’t. You wonder why you protested so much. You liked his company. You also liked telling him to leave. Why did you like that?

You pull the blankets over your head to block out the sun flitting in through the blinds and you wonder whether you liked him kissing you or not and you can't decide, and that makes you a little uncomfortable.

You don’t see him for six months.

You hear about him, sure. Burned down a factory in India, saved an orphanage in Vietnam, killed a man in Mexico, saved some profiled kid from a cop beating in Texas. Never near you, though. But you were hearing more about him than usual. He was working more.

You’re fighting some nameless shapeshifter villain with Captain America when suddenly you wonder: do you like men?

You bash a man into a wall he climbs out of and wonder it a little more. You know you like women, you always have, but men? Another beast entirely.

The answer is a resounding yes in the pit of your stomach but a bigger: does it matter? In your heart. You know like women and you can skirt by on that you’re sure- what would you tell aunt may? She’s old… she’d love you no matter what but that conversation sounds so… unpleasant.

You toss him over a fence and into Cap’s shield. Maybe you’re really only worried how you’ll feel about yourself if you admit it out loud. You wonder what it would feel like, to say it out loud. You remember the first time you heard the word gay as a child- slung as an insult because you wore a collared shirt that day, of all things, in second grade. You hadn’t even known what it meant but you vehemently denied the accusation.

Cap picks up the perp who leans on his arm woozily. Cap steadies him a bit and asks if he wants an ambulance called. He says no.

You're standing next to Cap when an officer comes over to help him limp over to a containment van and you fidget s bit and frown.

“Hey,” you say.

“Hey,” Captain America responds, turning to look at you.

“I think I might be gay,” you say, “or bi, or whatever.” It doesn't really sound like anything, actually. You’re kind of disappointed.

“Oh,” says Cap, “that got you stressed?”

“I guess,” you say, and frown, “Sorry. We’re working. I guess I just have a lot on my mind.”

Cap snorts a bit, a little like a laugh and pats you on the shoulder, “it’s alright. You want to talk about it?”

“No,” you say, “I just… I guess I felt like I wanted to tell someone. That’s pretty dumb.”

“Not really,” Cap says. He ruffles the top of your head as if there were hair there. It's very paternal, maybe a little weirdly so.

“I’m gonna head home,” you say, “but thanks.”

“Anytime. You’ve got my number.”

You sit at home and play Last of Us for an hour and a half until you save, quit, and go to your fridge.

Your carpet’s been replaced, the new one is a powder baby blue, and it's soft, but there's still no pancake mix in your fridge, and no water bottle of amalgamized hotel shampoos in your shower, and no strange love letters stuffed into your things. Sometimes you’d open a cabinet or a drawer and little crumpled up post it notes with vague sexual metaphors and crude drawings would tumble out and you’d sigh and grumble and throw them away and you wonder why you never assumed they were genuine on some level and he wasn’t just trying to get a rise out of you.

You close the fridge and call Steve.

And then there's some dramatic pining and stuff and eventually they kiss and it's that real good shit and I really wish I had wrote it sorry rip

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenue; and Your New Couch](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14351043) by [niðavellir (KingPreussen)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingPreussen/pseuds/ni%C3%B0avellir)




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